


Flying - 'In Aeternum Fidelis'

by RZZMG



Series: Hermione x Draco stories [38]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comedy, Drama & Romance, F/M, Falling In Love, Fidelius Charms, Forced Bonding, Forced Marriage, Forced Relationship, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mildly Dubious Consent, Misunderstandings, Order Member!Draco, Partnership, Past Relationship(s), Relationship Advice, Second Chances, Spy Draco Malfoy, Winning Her Back, divorced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 01:18:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9411092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RZZMG/pseuds/RZZMG
Summary: Like a Snitch in the wind, Draco Malfoy chases after his ex-wife, Hermione Granger, zigging and zagging through their stormy history to catch her once more. With a little bit of help from Harry and Ron, maybe he'll actually win in the game of love for once.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LooneyLunaFan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooneyLunaFan/gifts).



> This was my 2016 Dramione-Duet Fic Exchange piece (dramione-duet.livejournal.com). The fest is long over and so I can post this here for you at last. It's multi-chaptered.
> 
> Prompt used for the piece: _Draco-Hermione - main couple. Word limit max: 8,000 words. Forced marriage, special assignments, forced to work together, other housemates influencing opinions or giving crappy advice, dub-con, curse, any era. Squicks (no-no content): non-con, extreme violence, main character death, scat, watersports, blood play, OOC-ness_
> 
> Thank you so much to my wonderful beta, "WronkiiiFaint" - your help was invaluable, and I am greatly appreciative! You are awesome x 1,000,000 galleons!
> 
> Thank you so much, "Ningloreth" for once more Modding this fest for us - always love it, and you do an amazing job with it! We're lucky to have you in this fandom!
> 
> To my recipient, "Looneylunafan": I hope this Duet was fun for you, and I'm pleased to have been given the chance to meet your challenge. When I saw the prompt, it immediately tickled my fancy, but I put a twist on it. I hope you like my take on it! :)
> 
> 'In Aeternum Fidelis' = "Eternally Faithful" in Latin.
> 
> Original version 1.0 - 24 August, 2016  
> Revision 2.0 - 1 January, 2017

Hermione Granger took one look at Draco and promptly resigned the Order of the Phoenix.

"There is no way I'm working with  _him_  on your project, Harry. I quit," she pronounced and walked back up the stairs and out of the kitchen without a backward glance, stomping as she went and slamming the door behind her so hard it rattled the curio cabinets throughout the house.

Draco sighed.

He wasn't sure why he'd been hoping for a warmer greeting. Granger had warned him long ago that being obligated to a cause or a course of action should be her decision, not required by other people or circumstance…

_"I don't want to be forced, Draco. I want a choice in the matter. I've had my fill of being enslaved by magic."_

Perhaps twisting her hands to get her to agree to this project by pulling out the big lure—actually hurting Voldemort—hadn't been one of his greatest ideas, but a desperate, neglected libido called for desperate measures.

And hell, was he critically in need of her! Eight fucking months of no actual fucking was enough to drive a man mad!

"She hates me," he said, resigned to living with blue bollocks for the rest of his life.

"She doesn't hate you," Weasley stated with confidence, parking his expanding arse down in a creaking chair at the kitchen table and putting his wand up now that the danger had passed. "She just wants to geld you."

Draco glared at the man. "Do us a favour and stuff something down your gob. I'm trying to think."

Bloody hell, why was the witch was so obstinate? Why couldn't she, just once, not be so hard-headed and unforgiving? He'd saved her life  _and_  he'd given her more orgasms than was bloody natural—five years' worth in only a single year! At least! She'd turned him into a sex addict as a result. Didn't that count for anything with the woman?

Potter cleared his throat and tossed Draco a lopsided grin. "Still, that went better than I'd expected," he stated, clearly encouraged by having dodged actual carnage this time. "Truthfully, I thought she'd  _Avada_  us all on the spot and be done with it."

"'Mione can be downright mean when she puts her mind to it," Weasley agreed, and Draco noticed the man spoke soft enough for his voice not to carry his rather rude, but true assessment. "Personally, I think she's scarier than Ginny."

"Hey!" Harry protested, in defence of his wife.

"Wha'? I'm just sayin'," the Weasel King replied somewhat defensively. "'Sides, it's true—you know it is! Gin can be as vicious as an Ashwinder when she wants to be, but 'Mione…she's got dragon fire in that mouth of hers."

Sneering at them both, Draco gathered his coat from the back of the chair where he'd earlier laid it, and slung it over his arm in preparation to leave. "Well, I'll just leave you two ladies to your Sunday bickering," he sullenly said, feeling deflated by Granger's flat refusal to even look at him for longer than two seconds before fleeing the room.

Potter cut him off before he could budge an inch, however, restraining him with a hand at his elbow. "It was a good first step," he offered.

Draco was in no mood to be placated. "Potter, has anyone told you that your chirpy optimism and perpetually annoying cheerfulness is going to get you killed one day…most likely, by me."

Good natured to the end, Potter smiled at him in response to the threat. "Harm a hair on my head and you lose your way in with  _her_ ," his ally said with great assurance as he adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "She might even skin you alive for the attempt."

"Personally, I'd love to see her kick your arse, Malfoy," the second half of the Dunderheaded Duo stated, leaning back dangerously in the small chair and putting his oversized, booted feet up on the table. "She's a right hellion, our Hermione… _and_  she has a mean right hook."

Draco absently rubbed the left side of his jaw. "Don't I fucking know it," he remarked, recalling how she'd left him eight months ago. With a sigh, he waved the ginger off. "Just…talk to her. Get her to see sense. If I'm right, we could change the whole direction of the war with this plan."

Potter and Weasley traded one of those irritating, smug looks that reminded Draco that they understood better than anyone alive how Granger's temper flared, and they thought his desperation to get on her good side was 'cute'.

Fucking arseholes.

It was Scarhead who gave in first. "She's going to hex me with boils," he stated, looking back up the stairs at the direction their witch had left, "but I agree it's too good an idea not to try, even if it does require facing her wrath." He made a face that indicated he wasn't looking forward to that challenge.

Draco refused to say 'thank you' to the help. Instead, he simply nodded to both men and turned away, heading for the kitchen's back door. It led out into Grimmauld Place's small terrace containing Hermione's miniature herb garden, and was a safe place for him to Disapparate away safely.

Reaching for the aged, brass doorknob, the emerald and platinum signet ring on Draco's left hand caught his attention and he paused to stare at it. It needed a good polishing, as it was beginning to look a bit worn from neglect.

"Do you think she‒?" he began to ask, but pulled back at the last minute, unwilling to put all his hopes out there, especially for Potter and Weasley to see. It was too humiliating to appear so weak before them.

They answered him anyway, having worked with him long enough by now to know what he was asking.

"Yes, she does and she will," Potter replied in that calm, eerily perceptive way of his, answering both of Draco's unspoken questions. "Give it time. This project will be good for rebuilding the trust between you two."

Weasley's response was much more cynical; he snorted. "First chance you get, get on your knees and beg for her forgiveness. Rip out your heart and throw it at her feet, while you're at it. You don't offer her everything up front she'll keep you at arm's length forever." He glanced up the stairs, too. "She can be cruel when making a man pay for his sins."

Draco snorted.

Who did the King Weasel think he was talking to? If anyone knew how Hermione liked taking chunks out of a person's hide, it was him.

After all, they  _had_  been married…until eight months ago.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revelio Coelibatus = Latin for "Reveal Celibacy". A spell I made up for this fic, using the 'Revelio' series of spells in canon. The magic does as it states – reveals one's sexual promiscuity status to the caster.

Hermione did, eventually, come around, as Potter had predicted, and it hadn't taken Draco's submission to get her there. All it had taken was her best friends hammering her with  _'what if'_  and that big brain of hers began spinning at the possibilities, until finally, she'd relented to working with her ex-husband.

She'd made a space in the living room at Grimmauld Place for their meetings, and they'd taken up spots on opposite couches as she poured over old books on the subject of fidelity charms.

Just sitting in the same room with her without her casting an Unforgivable at him was progress, Draco told himself. He'd take it…and he'd push for more, because this uncomfortable silence sucked and wasn't doing much for advancing his cause.

"Admit it, you've missed me," he coaxed his ex-wife, releasing the Snitch in his hand and then catching it while it paused to enjoy the summer's breeze gently drifting in from the open window nearby.

That was the trick to snatching them, he recalled from his school days: find the warm gust of wind on the field, for a Snitch will always be drawn to it, and it will always slow just a bit to feel a pleasant tickle of balmy air through its wings.

He missed Quidditch, missed those few carefree years of his youth when the sport and beating Potter and impressing his father were the only important things in life. For just a moment, watching the golden ball spinning recklessly in the air, he wished he could go back to those days and re-do so many things, like catching the Snitch just once in a game.

Of course, if he did change the course of his life that far back, he wouldn't have ever known Granger as intimately as he did now, and since he didn't wish for  _that_  part of their story to be any different—well, except the ending of their marriage—he had to accept that even if he did have a Time-Turner, he wouldn't go back and alter a bloody thing. Frankly, he loved the memory of fucking Hermione into the sheets night after night, the feeling of her warm breath panting against his throat as he drove inside her again and again…

He had to close his eyes against the visual as it rose up in his mind, understanding now why Snitches liked a wild, hot wind blustering against them.

He glanced at his ex from the corner of his eye. She hadn't had sex in two-hundred and forty-two days—since they'd parted ways. That was, at least according to the stealthy  _Revelio Coelibatus_  he'd cast on her just this morning to check how long she'd been a celibate. That long without touching another man had to mean something, right?

There was only one way to find out…

"Okay, I'll go first, then. I've missed you," he admitted and snatched the Snitch from the air once more. "Your messy hair, your bossy attitude, that little moan you'd make in my ear when I was deep inside you and holding still."He glanced at her to see if he was affecting her at all. She squirmed a bit in her seat, and her cheeks pinked, but other than that, she pretended not to have heard him at all. "You miss that last bit as well, don't you? Admit at least that much."

Licking her fingers, Hermione turned the page on the book she was referencing, feigning disinterest. "It's good to see your ego's still the biggest thing about you."

He smirked in secret triumph, knowing he was under her skin now and that she wouldn't be able to help but pluck back, as her temper and pride wouldn't allow for anything else. Weasley was wrong; Granger didn't want him simpering and pleading. She wanted a fight, and that was something Draco excelled at contributing to any discussion,  _especially_  one with her.

"I've missed that harpy tongue of yours, too…in more ways than one."

Hermione made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. "You're still just as agitative, I see."

He chuckled. "I may irritate you, Granger, but deep down, in the places you hate to admit exist, you secretly love that I know just what to say and do to get your goat."

"Do I?"

He confidently nodded, gazing at his reflection in the Snitch's gold surface. The thing needed a good shining, too, much like his signet ring. "Sure. See, you need someone to help you channel all that excess rage you carry around with you on a regular basis, and I'm the only one with enough bollocks around here to do that without flinching. I set your negativity free and give you a good chase so you can work off your stress and frustrations."

He released the Snitch into the air and watched it hover above him.

"And then when you're tired and you've finally purged the venom from your system, I catch you and safely bring you back down to earth."

He snatched the Snitch from the air once more, careful of its wings, cradling it close.

"I fix you as no one else can."

He breathed on the golden, weakly protesting ball in his hand, and polished its surface on his shirt until it was shiny once more, then he held it out to her.

"Admit it, babe, no one else gets or accepts that side of you, not even your Tweedle-Dumb-and-Dumber sidekicks."

Actually, he didn't believe either Potter or Weasley was a thick-headed clot; quite the opposite, in fact. Two years working alongside them to bring down the Dark Lord had completely changed his opinion on the matter of the ginger's idiocy and Pothead's short-sightedness. They may have both been too headstrong, slovenly, ill-mannered, and sentimental for Draco's tastes, but time had honed a Slytherin's cunning in Harry, and Ron had become quite the strategist. He'd never admit it aloud, but he'd come to respect them both…like them even, to a certain extent.

It wouldn't do to let anyone know he felt that way about them, however. Draco did have a reputation to maintain, after all.

Besides, he was making a point about how fabulous  _he_  was, so it was fine to discount Potter and Weasley as being ninnies in this instance.

"Harry understands me just fine, as does Ron," Hermione murmured, turning back several pages with a frown on her face. "They're miles up on you, in fact, given we've all been friends since we were children…even if I do want to hex Harry inside-out for pairing you and me on this ridiculously made-up project."

Draco stared hard at her. "'Ridiculously made-up'? Determining a way to remove the fidelity spell on the Dark Mark without the enemy finding out is  _important_ , Granger."

He stood and moved to her side of the room, taking a seat near her on her sofa. This conversation was a perfect chance for an opening move as he now had her full attention at last, so he was taking Potter's advice and going for it.

"We shut down its influence, and the Dark Lord won't be able to automatically summon his Death Eaters to his side during an emergency or force us to lower our Occlumency shields at his whim, which is an advantage to those of us who are spies within his ranks. Theo, Snape, and I will be able to resist him on two fronts. This experiment can save lives and fragment the Dark Lord's power in one fell swoop." He tossed her a challenging glance. "Or, don't you want us safe?"

"Of course I do," she snapped at him, giving him a wary look, noting him scooting closer an inch at a time while he talked. "I'd feel relieved to know any of you wouldn't be forced to go to him or could resist his attempts at Legilimency."

"So, it's a worthwhile effort," he said, speaking softly and moving slowly to ease her. "And if anyone is going to find a way to make it happen, it's you and me, Granger. I mean, think about it: we've done two things no one else has ever done in recorded wizarding history. First, we broke an enslavement spell by poking at the fidelity charm built into it."

He hated to bring up that awful time in her history. It had been just about five years since her kidnapping, but he knew that time she'd spent as a magically-compelled slave to his father's depraved desires in the Fidelius charmed house on the edge of Carn Brea still haunted her.

"And later, we severed a fidelity charm from an ancient connubial spell."

That last he'd been less than thrilled to end as it had meant the end of his marriage, but Hermione had asked him for her freedom, and Draco had refused to be like his father and force her against her will.

"Those efforts would have confounded lesser people, but we did the impossible and changed the magical world for the better by learning how to break such antiquated and dangerous spells."

Gently, he extracted the book from her unresisting hands and closed it, setting it on the small coffee table before them. Granger just sat there, considering his words, making no move to withdraw. Her eyes were wide with amazement in fact, and her voice soft with remembrance when she replied, "We did do that, didn't we?"

He'd been right; this project  _was_  his way back in with her. Not only was he was convinced it could work, but perhaps it would also pave the way for a reward: a second chance with the woman he'd never stopped thinking of as his wife.

Now all he had to do was convince her of the same thing.

"Yes, we did, and we can do more, if you'll give us a chance."

He reached out and turned her hand over where it rested on her thigh, and placed his Snitch in the centre of her palm. The golden ball lay silent and still within her hand, having been worn out by Draco's earlier playing. Now, it slept, feeling secure in the warm cradle of her fingers.

"Together, Granger, we can do anything."

She glanced over at him, her eyes filling with wariness once more, her brow crinkling in the middle. "What do you  _really_  want from me, Draco?"

Confident that he'd cracked through her armour at long last, he leaned back into the sofa's cushions and held her gaze as he replied, "Everything, love. Absolutely everything."


	3. Chapter 3

Small touches were the key. Hermione responded better to those than when he crowded and caged her in, Draco found. Fortunately, their daily research time gave him ample opportunity to exploit that tactic.

It started with light brushes across her arm to get her attention, but then he intentionally sat close enough for their elbows and feet to bump frequently enough. Each time, his lovely ex-wife would blush and apologise, and Draco would feign being sorry as well.

When he began designing wand movements to go with their new spell, he would often show her his ideas for the flow of the magical energies, and then put his hand over her wrist to guide her flicks and swishes as she attempted to learn the new technique, too. Of course, this required they stand close, and for their bodies to touch and align…

For weeks, he chased Hermione thus, and she fluttered with interest, but remained out of reach. Draco was like any Seeker on the hunt, however, cunning and patient. He followed her lead, watching as the heat drew her in bit by bit, rousing her lust to the point where she would no longer be able to run from it.

Nine months to the day of their initial separation, she finally let him snatch her up.

**.**

**.~.**

**.**

She was the one to shut and lock the door, and to cast a Silencing Charm upon the room.

Tumbling against the curio cabinet that lined one of the walls, he and Hermione fell upon each other without hesitation. Hungry to have her once more, he pushed a hand into her rioting curls and held on tight while he plundered her mouth. Pushing the bulge of his cock against her belly, at the same time, he let her experience the full effect she had upon him. "Feel what you do to me, Granger?" he murmured into her ear, even as he reached under her jumper and undid the snap of her bra.

Cupping her breast, he stroked the pad of his thumb over her nipple, bringing it to prominence. Her face pressed into the lee of his shoulder, Hermione gave a tortured, pleading whimper.

"Good, now feel what I do to you," he whispered, peeling the clothing from her body and worshipping every inch revealed.

He made her come the first time while leaning against that same cabinet. His mouth was buried between her thighs, his fingers up inside her, and she was shaking from head to toe, curling her fingernails into the wood behind her and moaning his name.

Even as she continued to reel from the ecstasy he'd brought her, Draco had Hermione up and in his arms, heading determinedly towards one of the two sofas in the room. With a wave of his wand, he transfigured it into a bed, and laid her down in its middle, tossing his wand aside.

Shedding the last of his own clothing, he knelt between her legs, and grabbing her hips, entering her with a single, determined thrust that had her back bowing and her crying out in pleasure again. She reached for him then in a silent plea to come closer, so he bent at the waist and brought them together. With an arm around her shoulders and his other hand anchored to her hip, he fucked her slowly, thoroughly, going deep with each stroke…and bore the sharp sting of her nails curling into his arms and shoulders as he took her and made her his once more.

When she climaxed a second time, he claimed her mouth to taste her pleasure, and felt her tremble in his arms. And when it was his turn at last, he released in an explosion of light and heat that pulled everything from him and left him panting for breath in its passing.

He kept her there in that room, in that transfigured bed all the rest of the day, making love to her with his hands, mouth, and cock until she was exhausted, moving them past the point where tears or words could interrupt such burning, fierce need.

**.**

**.~.**

**.**

"And here it comes: regret," Draco growled, watching Hermione head for the door, her spine straight, her emotional walls already bricking themselves back into place. "I thought you'd be braver this time around, Granger."

Pausing with her hand on the knob, it seemed as if his words reached her, for she appeared torn between going and staying.

He propped an arm back behind his head, casual outside while inside he was in a state of serious turmoil. He had to keep her here, had to keep her from rebuilding her defences against him…

"I'd planned to give you that book as a first anniversary present. Paper, you know. Tradition and all that."

"Convenient," she said, her voice like ice. "And how long did it take you to come up with that believable lie? Nine months?"

He slammed his palm down on the bed, frustrated by her continual stubbornness. "For fuck's sake, Granger, how long are you going to make me pay for my father's sins? I have never lied to you and I did nothing to hurt you!"

She whirled on him. "Except not telling me about the book the moment you'd found it! Except tying me to you against my will, just as  _he_  did!"

Strangling her wasn't on the agenda today. He had to restrain the impulse. "I did it to save your life! And I already told you, I didn't know putting the ring on your finger would come with consequences beyond healing your lily-white arse!" He jumped out of bed and began redressing, not caring that he was in full view of the public through the open window or that she was staring at him even then with renewing lust. He was too angry to feel desire right then. "I didn't know it would bind us together like that, Granger! I didn't know it came with a lust charm built-in! It wasn't as if it had that written on the band or anything! All I knew was that it had a one-time-use emergency healing spell woven into it—which I used on  _you_ , by the way,  _not_  myself, as was intended!"

…And for once in his devious, little life, that was the bona fide truth.

He'd never actually meant for him and Hermione to be married at all. He'd simply placed upon her finger the family's signet ring, passed to him by his father when he'd gotten into Hogwarts.

What Draco hadn't known was that slipping the ring onto Granger's finger in a moment of blind panic and desperation to save her life after his father had struck her with one too many Cruciatus Curses, had effectively bound them together in a sort of quasi-magical marriage, for the ring had interpreted the gesture of being placed upon Hermione's left ring finger as a nuptial promise, not just a healing one.

At the time, when he'd felt the odd 'click' in his soul that tethered him to Granger, Draco had thought it a temporary thing that could easily be undone. To his horror, after his mother had explained things, Draco had discovered the true power of the ring: it had been imbued with a strong Fidelity Charm, complete with built-in aphrodisiac spells to assure the conception of the heir presumptive by the current Malfoy lord and his bride.

When they'd first learned of the ring's effects, he and Granger had agreed that there would be none of that nonsense between them. He didn't want to force their relationship despite his evolving feelings for her since their fourth year in school, and she hadn't wanted a relationship with him at all, especially after everything that had gone down with his deranged father. What both of them discovered, however, was that with every day's passing, the spell grew in strength until, after only a few weeks, its compulsion proved to be too powerful for either of them to ignore.

A month after his mother had poisoned his bastard father in revenge for his infidelity, and Draco and Granger had developed a way to remove the magical slave tattoo that Lucius had cursed her to bear, Draco officially made Hermione his wife. By then, she'd been more than receptive to the idea, of course. They'd both given in to their enchanted lust…and continued to do so over and over again for the next year, hedonistically pawing at each other at every opportunity, the risk of being caught in the act of sexual congress by others merely a secondary concern to the necessity of finding completion with each other.

Thank all the Founders for his mother's continual interference then. It had frequently saved them from being found out, and bought them the time they'd needed to work on a way to break the marriage spell.

‒Not that Draco had wanted that after thoroughly exploring the depths of the ring's benefits, but he was smart enough to realise that explaining to the Dark Lord that he'd married a Muggle-born, even by accident, would only end one way for him. Besides, Hermione had been hell-bent to find a way to be free of the marriage spell too, despite the fact she'd thoroughly enjoyed their sexual relationship and seemed to have come to care for him over time as well.

_"I don't want to be forced, Draco. I want a choice in the matter. I've had my fill of being enslaved by magic."_

For months, she'd ripped through the shelves in his family's library like a miniature hurricane, looking for any hint regarding the ancient ritual that had bound them together, determined to break its hold.

It was right around their first anniversary that Draco had stumbled across a book in his father's old desk drawer that had provided a clue as to how to cast a marriage spell. Thumbing through it, he'd quickly realised that the notes contained within the book would allow him and Hermione to tear the spell apart into its components. From there, they could easily devise a method of reversing such a charm, much as they had Lucius' enslavement spell months earlier.

At the time, Draco would admit that his Slytherin side had whispered a warning in his ear that his wife would use the clues provided within the book's pages to divorce herself of him and ride off into the sunset with either Weasley or Potter, and that he should hide or burn it. The side of him that loved the witch, though, had wanted to believe that over the last year, she'd come to love him just as much, and that she'd want to get re-married to him properly once she felt discharged of the ring's magical compulsion.

In the end, after a few hours of internal debate on the matter, he'd decided to give her the book as an anniversary present, and had tossed it into a drawer in his own desk to give to her upon the date in question.

Unfortunately, he'd forgotten how curious Granger could be. She'd found the book while searching for something else, and had confronted him on it. That's when the accusations had begun to fly: he'd been hiding it from her, intentionally deceiving her, had even tricked her from the beginning when he'd put the ring on her finger, knowing it would bind them together and force them to have sex, etcetera. Her awful experiences under his father's long-time enslavement had tainted her ability to trust in any man, and so Draco's protests of innocence had fallen on deaf ears then.

Her hurtful indictment had cut into him worse than Lucius' disappointed ravings ever had, though, so he'd agreed to tuck tail and seek out the nearest hole to crawl into. Better that than be tied to someone who hated him on sight…and to have his heart broken into even smaller pieces.

It had taken them a week to break the spell out into its three pieces: fidelity, obedience, and lust. It had required two more weeks to riddle out the counter-spell for each portion, and for him to perfect the wand work.

Finally, on a grey, cold morning, Draco released his wife from her bond to him, severing her side of the spell and letting her fly away without a word.

Nine months later, and he'd never stopped wanting or loving Hermione Granger, though.

For him, their time together had been real, for he'd desired her even before the marriage spell had forced him to confront those feelings. And with the ring's influence still binding  _him_ , he'd been unable to give himself to anyone else since. Not that he'd wanted to.

He still wasn't one-hundred percent sure about her feelings, though, despite the fact he'd just bedded her six ways from Sunday. His ex-wife was a tough nut to crack.

Struggling with his shirt, he put it on backwards, and then inside-out, but at that moment he hardly cared about his appearance. That was the least of his problems. He didn't care that he could feel static pulling his hair up in different directions, and that it probably made him look like Potter on his best hair day. He didn't care that he'd neglected to button his trousers or put on his socks and shoes as he stomped over to her. All he cared about was keeping her in the room with him a little longer, knowing that if he could provoke her enough, she'd stay and battle it out with him instead of darting away once more.

"Why can't you believe in me, Granger?" he demanded of her, behaving decidedly un-Slytherin-like with such an exaggerated and loud display of emotion.

Challenging his ex-wife in this manner, however, would cause her to stand her ground and defend against his accusation of her cruelty, he knew...and  _that_  would force them both to confront the ugliness that had laid between them for so long.

Because the truth was, he couldn't stay away from her any longer, and he was sick of fighting her haunted past. This cancerous silence they'd had going for nine months was killing them both, and Draco was determined to make her see that fact, like it or not.

"Everything I've done for the past several years has all been for you," he pointed out.

"For me? Really? I find that about as hard to believe as the existence of Nargles!"

She was shouting back now. That was a good sign. Not only was he winning this little power struggle they had going, but her anger only made her emotionally unstable. He could direct her right where he wanted...

"You want me to prove it, is that it?" he growled, glaring down at her. "Fine, then how about this: consider today your revenge, if you want."

"Revenge?" Now she looked confused. "What does that even  _mean?_  Revenge for what?"

"I hurt you," he reminded her. "I held you against your will and enslaved you with an aphrodisiac spell—accidentally, of course, but that hardly matters, does it?"

She looked at him as if he'd grown a second head. "And you think me using you for sex makes us somehow even?"

And there it was: the perfect opportunity to pitch the Snitch...

"Sure, if you want it to," he said with a feigned sigh, and ran a hand through his long fringe, pushing it out of his eyes. "Use away until you've taken your pound of flesh, Granger. Make me pay for regularly fucking you until you were screaming with pleasure, and occasionally making you come so hard you passed out. Punish me for taking advantage of the Lust spell that rode us both into near insanity. Enslave me even more than you already have. I'm all yours."

A part of him knew she'd never go for it. It was too outrageous a proposal, even for someone like him, who was used to saying such ridiculous‒

"Fine."

That shut him up.

Had she just agreed to his proposal?

"Fine?"

"Yes, fine."

With that, she tore off the blouse she'd only just finished righting, letting its buttons fly across the room and the material to fall to the ground without care. Then, she closed the distance between them, a dark look in her eyes.

"Granger–"

Grabbing his long hair, she yanked him down to her level and took his mouth, un-gently and with determination. Then, she began removing both of their clothing, much as he had earlier, being none-too-gentle in the doing.

"If this is sex on my terms," she said, panting and with a bit of a crazed gleam in her eye as she ripped his trousers and pants down his legs, "then I want you to lick me until I climax. And afterwards, I'm going to have you and you can't orgasm until I tell you that you can."

To say Draco was shocked was the understatement of the year. He liked it, but he was still quite astonished that he was going to get his way after all.

"Uh, demanding, little thing, aren't you?" he remarked, turned-on by her sudden shift in attitude and hopeful that, perhaps, angry sex wouldn't be such a bad thing in this case, especially given their penchant for making things work with anger fueling them both.

"Shut up," she growled at him. "You don't speak unless I tell you to, either."

He nearly fell over at that.

Luckily, she gave him a great shove, sending him toppling backwards onto the bed, so he landed on the soft mattress rather than a cold, hard floor.

Tearing her knickers off her legs and throwing them aside, Hermione stood in front of him completely naked and defiant, the Gryffindor witch of his dreams. Draco stared up at her in awe, totally enchanted by this version of his swotty ex-wife.

Lifting a foot, she put it on the bed next to him and opened herself up. Her sex was still wet from their last bout of love-making, and Draco felt his body jerk in response.

"Now, you ferrety bastard, you're  _my_  slave, and you will do what I say," she demanded.

"Yes, dear," he happily agreed, willingly compliant to being hers at any time.

Hell, he'd hoped, schemed, and prayed that inciting his ex-wife would keep her at his side a little longer. To his infinite relief, it had actually worked!

That night, he served Hermione's every need, faithfully and for hours, until exhaustion claimed them both. Draco bent his knees and his back to her, and gave her everything she wanted without hesitation or argument, pushing past his fear and her anger. In so doing, he finally freed her from the chains of her past…and enslaved himself to her for all time.

She flew, he chased.

That's what love  _really_  meant to a Slytherin, after all.


	4. Chapter 4

"She's  _what?_ "

"Sick," Potter explained, calmly and without judgment. The look in the man's eye said he knew more than he was letting on, however. "She's ill, lying abed and not coming down today…at least, according to the note pushed under her bedroom door at me." The freak adjusted his glasses on his nose. "You wouldn't know anything about that, though, would you?"

Draco sighed. "She's regretting yesterday with me. And last night."

"Told you the living room was locked for a reason, Harry!" Weasley piped in, while stuffing a jelly-filled pastry into his mouth and reading through the Monday morning Prophet. "You owe me five big ones."

Draco frowned at the ginger prat, but flinched against Potter's penetrating stare. He looked away and cleared his throat, feeling acutely uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was headed. "Purely by accident, I…uh…may have given her the wrong impression as to what yesterday meant to me."

"And last night," Weasley added. He smoothly ducked to avoid the cup Draco threw at his head, and it shattered against the far wall. "You'd better clean that up before Mum gets here for lunch. She'll save the Dark Lord the trouble and have your head for breaking the china," the man said, shoving more food into his gob.

"What impression did you leave her with, exactly?" Potter asked, ignoring his brother-in-law and focusing his emerald, cat-like eyes on Draco.

Draco was of a mind to walk away before he got himself in too deep. With a growl, he confessed instead, "I told her she could think of it as revenge sex, if it made her feel less guilty."

"Revenge? What does that even  _mean?"_

Draco wanted to throw something at the man, too, but the only remaining utensil in his immediate reach was a spoon—hardly the choice for bloody carnage. "You sound just like her," he spat. "Yes, revenge. Because she needed a reason for her willing surrender—something that wouldn't make her feel like she was a fool or a victim for giving in. I offered her an out."

One dark eyebrow tweaked upwards at that. "How is that revenge?"

"Because she walked out after it was done, and didn't look back."

"Like she was finished with you, just like you pretended to be finished with her when you cut her loose from the marriage spell."

Draco said nothing to that accusation, feeling humiliated and regretful enough over the whole thing.

Potter sighed. "You two are fools. It's clear you're both still in love with each other, but your individual pride just keeps getting in the way."

The arsehole was right, of course. That had always been their problem, he and Granger: pride. Neither of them was good at concession. Draco was trying, but he hadn't been raised to give in, only to take. Lucius' childhood lessons had nearly drowned him in a hot, wet blanket of hate when he'd been a child, and as an adult, they'd continued to tug at his edges like some bad hanger-on.

Last night, though, he'd submitted, swallowing his pride for love of her. Why couldn't she do the same for him?

…Maybe because she didn't love him, after all.

Had he been wishing for so long that he'd just assumed his lovely Snitch belonged to him, when she never had at all?

He just wasn't sure what to believe anymore.

"What–?" He paused, unsure if it lowered him even further to ask anything more of Potter and Weasley, but the truth was, Draco was at a loss as to how to proceed. If anyone knew how to read Hermione Granger's secret heart, it was her best friends, surely. "What do you suggest?"

Scarhead stared at him for a moment, and in his dark, green gaze, Draco could see the wheels turning. He saw the doubt, the moment where Potter discarded a darker option, and then the guy shook his head and seemed to choose the course of honour and goodness. "Go to her. Don't let her pull away. Demand she tell you why the marriage spell kept forcing you two together." He held up a hand. "It's not my tale to tell, but ask her."

Weasley put his newspaper down, and slid his plate away from him. "You and 'Mione are like watching a match between the Harpies and Puddlemere, Malfoy. You flirt with the quaffle, occasionally hit each other with a bludger, sometimes one of you scores a goal, but you're not really making progress towards catching the sodding Snitch, ya know?"

He stared hard at Draco's left hand, where his family's signet ring had sat since the day Hermione had removed it from her own hand.

"You've got secrets you're keeping, too," the man reminded him. "If you expect her to tell you the truth, then you have to do the same."

The blundering bravehearts were right. The only way he and Granger were fixing their relationship wasn't for him to be the only one bending. Last night, he'd given her everything he had to give except the final truth. It was time he corrected that…including requiring her to start bending a little, too.

He headed for the door, pausing only long enough to thank Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley on the way out.

**.~.**

Hermione refused to let him into her bedroom, at first. His natural charm swayed her, eventually. After all, sitting five hours outside her door without a pee break is bound to send any female a statement about a man's true intent.

"Why are you here?" she demanded, sounding a little resigned.

"Because nothing's changed for me," he confessed, going for broke. "It's still you. Always you, Granger."

"I thought it was just revenge."

He sat down on her bed, so they were at the same level, so there would be no misinterpretations this time. "I said  _you_  could tell yourself that, if you needed to."

She was getting angry again. "And why would I need to?"

He threw her a deliberate, sharp look. "Because of your damnable pride, woman! You needed a reason to explain why you allowed it to happen, so you didn't end up hating yourself. I gave it to you. That didn't mean I felt that way about it."

She sat and steamed on that for a bit, before asking, "So what did you feel?"

"Hope," he stated, honestly and without reserve. He reached up and gently pushed a stray curl off her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. "My wife was finally giving me the chance to win her love."

Her throat convulsed and tears flooded her eyes. Wrenching her hand from his, she pulled away. "I'm not your… You don't want that from me. No one could. Not after…"

She choked, refusing to go on, but Draco finally understood the true damage his father had done to her.

He sighed in sorrow.

"Granger, I have wanted you for longer than you know, and nothing that's happened to you has, in any way, changed my desire or my love for you. If last night didn't prove it, then maybe this will." He held his left hand out to her. His family's signet ring sparkled emerald green and platinum bright as the sunlight coming in through the sole window in the room fell upon it. "Try to take it off."

Frowning, Hermione stared at his hand. "I don't understand."

Feeling the spell of the vow upon the ring still in place, he knew the outcome of his request, but he wanted Granger to see it, too. It was the only way to prove things had never changed for him.

"Tug it, use magic," he encouraged her. "I dare you to try to remove it...without removing the finger or hand."

Reaching out, she took hold of the ring's side and attempted to slide it from him. It didn't budge. She then attempted to unstick it using a charm. Same effect. She tried slicking the ring with a lubrication charm. Ditto.

"I don't understand. Why won't it–?"

He watched her expression shift and her eyes widen when she finally understood.

"You're still faithful to me, as a husband would be," she whispered, and pressed her fingertips over her mouth in shock. "The bond never severed for you, did it?"

He shook his head.

"But that…that could only happen if…"

She glanced up at him, tears beading her long, dark lashes.

Draco reached out and stroked her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. "If I'd intentionally kept it in place. You never wondered why, after you gave it back to me, I kept the ring on my marriage finger?"

She began to cry then, as the pieces of their broken marriage all came together. "Merlin, you  _do_  love me, don't you? You didn't lie. How is this possible?"

She stared at him with such remorse that it broke his heart all over again.

"You kept insisting it was true that you didn't mean for us to be married, but I just…I couldn't believe you!" she said and covered her face with her hands, clearly ashamed. "You were  _his_  son, and he hurt me so much and I couldn't get past that, so when the marriage forced us to have sex, too, I thought… Oh, god, I accused you of… You didn't hurt me at all, did you? I hurt you! I'm  _so_  sorry, Draco! I'm so sorry!"

He shushed her and held her then, as she cried against his chest, letting her wash away in a shower of hot tears all of the foul rust that had tarnished her golden wings for so long.

**.~.**

"A part of me wanted to trust you," she admitted later, as her sobs ran their course and subsided. "I fell in love with you, but I was so scared it was all some sick game. I didn't know if I could even trust myself then, not after being a slave for so long. I didn't know if what I was feeling for you was gratitude or a form of Stockholm Syndrome because of the forced marriage. I just didn't know what to believe or trust. I only knew that the only way to find out for sure was to free myself from the whole situation. Only then could I know if…if what I felt for you was real."

He took a deep breath, recalling Potter's advice, putting two-and-two together. "Is that why you blocked any chance of conceiving a child with me?"

She went still and quiet between one breath and the next.

"You knew?" she asked, horrified.

"I guessed."

Just now, but did it matter when he'd figured it out, really?

They were silent for a time, before she asked him, "Are you angry?"

He chuckled. "Granger, although anger has always been one of our favourite emotions, in this case, not becoming pregnant was a good thing. Between the war and the fact it would have been another unwanted thing forced on you…" He shook his head. "I'm glad you were thinking enough for both of us and taking precautions."

She nodded. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, though."

He shrugged. "I omitted the part about severing the marriage spell on my side, so we're even."

"Why didn't you sever the link?"

He looked down at her pink, upturned face and smiled at the smattering of girlish freckles across the bridge of her nose. "Because I found I just couldn't bring myself to belong to anyone else."

Reaching up a trembling hand, she traced the angles of his face with a light touch. "You really do love me."

He turned his head slightly and kissed the small, ink-stained tips. "I even have a Fidelity Charm upon me to prove it." He waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively. "Care to see?"

Her laughter was pretty. It was…shiny.

Cupping his jaw, she pulled his mouth to hers and whispered in a warm breath against his lips, "It seems the Slytherin Seeker has finally caught his Snitch."


	5. Chapter 5

**_~Epilogue~_ **

They did it. Using the marriage spell as a guide for understanding how fidelity spells interlaced with other types of magic, Draco and Hermione were able to craft a new and original spell to break said charms.

When they tried it on his Dark Mark a few weeks after their reconciliation, it had the effect of silencing the Mark's influence upon Draco permanently, cutting Voldemort off from having any access whatsoever to his inner thoughts and the ability to summon him at will. Unfortunately, the side effect was that Voldemort knew of the loss, so that meant that Draco was now effectively an official Order defector.

That mattered little to them, however, as they tirelessly worked towards finding new ways to alter the Dark Mark to the Order's advantage, utilizing their work on Fidelity Charms as a guide.

—That, and they relentlessly worked towards wearing the springs out on the bed they shared (much to Potter and Weasley's chagrin), flying together again and again towards their own personal version of Heaven.

**_~FIN~_ **


End file.
